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Great entry, stupid poll. But then again who knows? Maybe the answer is not so obvious for everybody. If you had put up an entry and a poll as commonplace as «In ecotourism lies the income», you would have many comments and votes.

But people who are on the net know very little about olive trees, the rain and fools!

ok, we have a full house now!
– The olive crop in the valleys and from terraces on hills is collected December the latest. The olive crop in the plains is collected sooner.
– Water is all important. The correct balance of water, that is.
– Olive trees are easy to transplant. You dig a big hole around the roots and then bring a crane to uproot the tree. It’s a nice tree, tamed and given to the humans by Athena the goddess herself. If the owners are hard working, the tree does whatever they want it to do. Even if you are not a hard worker, it is sufficiant that you talk to the tree every now and then.

(Did you follow the tradition and planted the tree when your son was born?)

After a few centuries people might call it: Simon’s Olive tree. The tree which the teller of tales planted and looked after. The tree under which he sat and told his tales. The tree that provided the oil for his salad and for the wheel of his eloquent tongue.

This was supposed to be a very special night. The night of the brightest full moon or the year! In fact the full moon of August is brighter (because I think it’s closer to the Earth), but the sky in summer is not so clear as in some nights of January. Anyway I had great expectations for tonight. At dawn it looked as if it was going to snow and because snowfall, though quite often on this island in winter, doesn’t usually last long. So I hoped that we would have the brightest moon of the year travelling in a clear sky and shinning over a white landscape. Well, it didn’t work out that way. It didn’t snow (yet) and there are big grey clouds in the sky. The moon’s sure shinning bright but we don’t see it. The beams filter through thick snowclouds which are travelling very fast with the north wind. This creates strange light effects -which of course I am not as photo-wise (yet) as to catch with my camera (boohoo-hoo).

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From the southern part of the island the moon is very visible, they tell me. There are patches with clouds and shadows and that’s even better -it must look like the but with the moon instead of the sun. Even if wasn’t tired I wouldn’t drive to Ayios Kirikos on such a night -I’m afraid of frost and ice on them mountain roads. The car is ok, the tires are not (too many drives on stony dirt roads in autumn). I talk a lot about the weather. Yes I do. It’s a very important ‘factor‘. Not even residents are used to it. They talk about it a lot too and the TV or Radio weather forecasts are very popular. The even have a special way to foresee the weather of the whole year. The system is called ‘merominia» (one day=one month) and it’s based on analogy. They do this in August and if they read the signs well, they are always correct. But one has to be very patient (perhaps also stay awake for 6 days and nights) and very experienced, so it’s usually old men who do this. It’s not a secret, like magic and if you ask they are glad to tell you what they do -just observe the sky and take simple notes every hour for six 24hours. Can you do it? No? I thought so.